


kingfisher, sound the alarm

by fruitwhirl



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, they are CHILDREN and should not be getting married at this age let them LIVE, this will most certainly not be canon-compliant after 309 but i'm posting this anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 14:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21459373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitwhirl/pseuds/fruitwhirl
Summary: “How do you love her?”“Well, I don’t know if I ever did.”“No, I mean the other girl, the one that you love. The one you don’t have a chance with.” He cocks his head to the side, closes the book in his lap. “Have you told her how you love her?”
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Winifred Rose, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 11
Kudos: 257





	kingfisher, sound the alarm

**Author's Note:**

> hi friends. i have gone into a deep, dark anne of green gables spiral. after binging all of awae last weekend, i just finished watching anne of green gables & the sequel last night and it was beautiful and i couldn't not write something, anything. this follows the events in 308. the title is from "kingfisher" by joanna newsom.

In his trouser pocket, the ring sits, a peach pit at the bottom of his stomach.

Gilbert tries not to cling to it, like he does at the present moment, standing at the edge of the Roses’ stoop. His thumb smooths over the cool metal, the little green jewels that rest on the very top of the band. Idly, he wonders just for a moment what color Winifred’s eyes are—are they blue? Are they brown? He thinks he’d remember if her eyes were the same emerald as the stone (if they had that same jade shine that he knows all too well).

(A very small part of him hopes that her eyes aren’t green.)

It takes him a few minutes to compose himself, drum up the courage to knock on the heavy wood of the door, before remembering that the brass knocker does actually exist and would probably be more effective.

The next moments pass in a blur: he informs the housekeeper that he’s come to call on the youngest Rose, and he’s steered into the parlor, where he waits for barely a breath before she comes down, accompanied by her father who smiles at Gilbert knowingly. Something in his gut feels off he thinks that Anne, in that romantic, grandiose way of hers, would call it a thousand butterflies fluttering, beating their wings throughout his veins as a result of his most ardent anticipation of this proposal. He chalks it up to nerves (at least, he hopes it’s simply nerves).

And then suddenly, he and Winifred are alone—even the servants have gone, though he suspects her father is probably close by, within earshot. She raises her brow in that sly way of hers. “It really is a surprise to see you so soon after your last visit.” Winifred says the next with a quirk of the corner of her lip, “I am especially curious to know how your examinations went. I wonder if you’re as smart as you think you are.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he interrupts. He has to do this. Needs to, really. Cool as always, Winifred nods slightly, gesturing for him to continue. For some reason, though, everything feels so very wrong—but is that because the parlor, though a traditional, grown-up place to propose marriage, feels too stuffy (for a brief second, he finds himself terribly missing the great white orchards and shining waters of Avonlea). Or, is it because he shouldn’t be doing this? He pushes past this doubt, steadies himself. “Well, it’s just that—you and I, we are a good match. You’re a lively, intelligent woman and a caring friend, and I know I don’t have very much to my name, but I do have plans to establish myself. Your father gave me his blessing.” He reaches into his pocket, grips the ring in his fist and shifts toward her, looks up at her. “Will you please give me your hand in marriage?”

Winifred smiles kindly, how she always does.

“Oh, you know I can’t, Gilbert.”

His heart stops, but there’s an inkling of relief in there.

“I don’t have any intentions of marrying, Gilbert,” she explains, leaning forward to rest her hand on top of his in apology. “I know my father wants me to, but as fond as I am of you, I am not in want of a husband right now or at any time in the near future.” Her voice gets a little quieter, a little more delicate.

Gilbert frowns. “Winifred, I—"

“I think both I and my father have pushed you to grow up too fast. You’re barely eighteen. You need time to figure out what you want—what you _really _want. What you need. To be bold, you don’t need or really want me, Gilbert.” Her expression softens even more so. “And I don’t need or want you like that either.”

With that, she rises from her seat and bobs a curtsy, signals her departure. She pauses right before the doorframe, says, “I do hope you visit us, though. We do enjoy your company.” And then she leaves.

There’s a small part of him that _wants _to argue with her—after all, as he had told Bash, he felt Anne turning him down gave him clarity, that he could make the choice to marry Winifred and it would be right. But then there’s Mary, sweet Mary, in the back of his head, screaming _marry for love and only love. _

As he leaves the Rose residence, he wonders if the hurt comes not from the events that transpired in Charlottetown but from what happened in his home, in Avonlea, at the ruins beneath the glow of the storied constellations. What happened when Anne looked at him, her eyes wide and her tongue still, for just that once, for just that moment as the warm glimmer of the firelight sets her face alight. He wishes that the girls hadn’t disrupted them, hadn’t burst the bubble that had formed between them.

He shakes his head in an attempt to clear his mind, just a bit, as he continues walking.

Soon enough, he’s at the station, waiting for the late train. He sits on a bench, beside a man who, after reading a small, weathered book, begins looking through his satchel for something. The man is young, perhaps just a year or so older than Gilbert himself, which reminds him of his own age once again.

The man—_boy_, Gilbert supposes—starts searching more desperately. Curious, Gilbert watches him, startling when the other boy turns toward him. “Do you happen to have a pen I can borrow for just a moment?”

Something tugs at the very edge of his heart, but he ignores it, feels for a fountain pen in the bottom of one of his coat pockets. It feels warm, somehow, and when he hands it over, he realizes that it’s Anne’s. The one she lent him when they were studying at Ms. Stacy’s, and he watches as the other boy uses her pen to scribble something furiously in the margins of one of the book’s pages.

When he finishes, he offers Gilbert the pen back. The boy breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done.”

As he lets the pen rest in his palm, Gilbert furrows his brow. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you reading?”

The boy smiles. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning—her, uh, her sonnets. Well, a collection of all of her poetry. But,” his voice drops to a whisper. “Don’t make fun of me, but I’m going to see my sweetheart, and she loves poetry, so I’m trying to memorize her favorite sonnet.”

“Oh?” Gilbert is intrigued.

“Sonnet 43. The one that starts, ‘How do I love thee?’” It seems familiar, in a far-off way that makes him think that Anne once mentioned it to him, but he urges the boy on. “It’s beautiful, and she loves it, and I love her.”

“Are you going to propose?”

“No, not yet anyways. One day. We’re too young, I think. But I love her, and she should know.” He gestures to the page, to the still drying ink. “I just realized what I wanted to say and had to write it down before I forgot.” He pauses. “Do you have your own girl?”

Chuckling, Gilbert slips the pen through his fingers. “No, I actually just came from proposing, and I got rejected.”

The boy is quiet, then pats his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “Sorry, that has gotta be rough.”

“It’s okay,” Gilbert says, shaking his head. “Believe me, it’s for the best. I didn’t love her in the way that I—anyways, I didn’t recite for her or put much thought into it.” He bites his lip, wonders if he should mention Anne. Then he trudges on. “Honestly, I only proposed because I thought I had to, because I thought I didn’t have a chance with, with—someone else.”

“How do you love her?”

“Well, I don’t know if I ever did.”

“No, I mean the other girl, the one that you actually love. The one you don’t have a chance with.” He cocks his head to the side, closes the book in his lap. “Have you told her how you love _her?”_

Gilbert is silent.

“Maybe you should.” The train arrives then, and Gilbert realizes that it’s _his. _The boy quirks his eyebrow. “Good luck to you, and thank you again for the pen.”

* * *

Under a purple, dusky sky that is just beginning to yawn with the rising sun, Gilbert finds himself on a stoop again. This time, it’s different. Instead of it facing a large, grandiose home that has far too many rooms to count, he drinks in the wooden bench with work boots next to it and the windchimes and the familiar scent of old cedar and hay and flowers. He holds his pen in his hand, hopes that it will be enough of an excuse to see her.

He knocks.

And waits.

Knocks again.

And waits.

But no one ever answers, and he thinks that maybe he’s just here too early.

He considers staying there, on the little porch, but then he remembers that he hasn’t slept in over twenty hours and he misses his bed. He’d like a change of clothes, too.

At some point, he leaves, heading back to the Blythe-Lacroix estate, and—in a moment of impulsivity—takes a longer way, through the orchards. They’re beautiful at this time of year, the apple trees blossoming white and lush. It’s a little romantic, he muses, in the light of dawn, and for some reason—maybe _that _reason—he isn’t surprised when he sees a flash of red.

Anne doesn’t see him, but he watches as she ambles through the trees maybe ten meters away from him as she trails her hands among the branches, letting her fingers trace the pale petals when she pauses intermittently. If he listens carefully, he thinks he hears her talking in a low, soft voice. She might be reciting Tennyson or Shelley or Blake or any other number of poets, or maybe she’s just speaking to herself, constructing a story of high romance, of knights and maidens and happiness and tragedy.

He wonders what she’s saying.

Gilbert moves forward in an attempt to listen a little closer, but there’s an accidental crack when he steps on a branch, and Anne looks up, startled. And then sees him.

She freezes, her hand fiddling with a blossom. Her mouth falls open, just a little bit, and he somehow gravitates toward her, and in just a few moments is but a meter away. The flower falls from her grasp, floating to rest by her feet.

“Gilbert.”

“Hello, Anne.” He remembers the last time he saw her—first, her drunken dancing before flames, and then her rambling as she tried to respond to him. To his proposal of sorts. “I’ve missed you.”

Confused, she scrunches her eyebrows, her nose. “You just saw me.”

“I know.”

“Oh.”

“I just. You know.”

“Yeah.”

Then, he realizes that (it appears at least) Anne has come from the direction of his own home, and he from hers. He offers, “I just went to see you—to give you back your pen—but you weren’t there.”

“Yeah, I-uh I wanted to drop off a plum pudding for Bash, and I heard you had gone to Charlottetown yesterday and that you might be back and—” and she breathes in, like she’s steadying herself. Her words, when they appear, feel sturdy, practiced. “I just wanted to congratulate you—you and Winifred, on the engagement. I’m so happy for you.”

Gilbert steps forward. “We’re not engaged.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He waits for a beat, to see if she’ll interject, then continues. “She made me realize that it wasn’t what I wanted.”

Inexplicably, Anne’s face falls. She stutters, “Gil, I can’t—I mean, I-I hope you didn’t give up the opportunity of a lifetime—the _Sorbonne—_and a beautiful, smart, lovely girl for, for—” She cuts herself off.

Taking another move toward her so that they’re really only an arm’s length apart, he looks down at her, at her mouth that usually is oh so wide and smiling and at the constellation of freckles that scatter across the plains of her face. Her hair is down and unkempt and free and Gilbert reaches out, brushes his thumb light across her cheeks. He tucks a scarlet strand behind her ear, letting his hand linger there. “I didn’t give anyone or anything up. And I don’t want the _Sorbonne _or Winnifred.”

The _I want you _is implicit.

Her eyes flit up to meet his, and there’s that green. That bright, shimmering green. The shade that matches the stone in his pocket. The stone that he’s ignoring, for now.

Gilbert drops his hand to hover over hers for the briefest of seconds until finally letting it rest by his side, but he doesn’t move away. “I’m not proposing, Anne, we’re much too young for that, but I need you to know that there could never be anybody else for me but you. You're compassionate and ambitious and loyal and smarter than anyone I know and one of my best friends, and I treasure your friendship on its own more than anything else in the world.” He takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “But if there’s even the smallest chance you feel anything more—”

She cuts him off, leaning up and pressing her lips to his jaw (she can’t quite reach anything else). Against the skin there, she whispers, “‘If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.’”

At this, he finds himself smiling and asking, “Tennyson?” only for her to nod and kiss the corner of his grin.

There’s so much to figure out—what they are to one another, how they will proceed with college and their careers—but for right now, they are eighteen and sixteen and surrounded by apple trees and possibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> gilbert and anne are CHILDREN and do not need to be getting married right now. to anyone. 
> 
> anywho follow me at dmigod on tumblr!


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